Category Archives: Events

On the occasion of the celebrations for the five-hundredth anniversary of the death of Leonardo da Vinci, the Governorate of Vatican City State, along with the Vatican Museums, is celebrating the great Renaissance genius with an exhibition that, from22 March to 22 June 2019, will enable the public to admire, free of charge, Leonardo’s celebrated painting of Saint Jerome.

For the solemn anniversary, the work – the only one of the artist in the papal collections – will be specially transferred from the Vatican Pinacoteca to the Braccio di Carlo MagnoinSaint Peter’s Square, where it will be positioned in an exclusively arranged exhibition space.

A document from the Historical Archive of the Fabric of Saint Peter will also be displayed, attesting to Leonardo’s stay in an apartment specially arranged for him in the Vatican Belvedere. In addition, to support and supplement the visit experience, a rich educational accompaniment will illustrate the history of the painting and the diagnostic and restoration works it has undergone, and will also explore the life and the figure of the artist, in relation to the historical and cultural context in which he worked in the second decade of the sixteenth century.

Representing the Mistery of the Trinity The restoration of the Interlandi “Throne of Grace”

22 March – 8 June 2019Room XVII, Pinacoteca

On 22 March, on the occasion of the Easter period, the Vatican Museums open to the public an exhibition dedicated to the iconography and to the recent restoration of the Interlandi “Throne of Grace” (1485-1495), the work of the Flemish painter Vrancke van der Stockt (c. 1420-1495), conserved in the diocesan museum of Caltagirone, in Sicily.

The painting, which will be specially exhibited until 8 June in the Vatican Pinacoteca – before returning to its display site at the Monumental Complex of the Friars Minor Conventual of Caltagirone – may be admired by all visitors to the Museums following the scientific analyses and the conservation intervention performed in the Vatican laboratories.

The exhibition, curated by Adele Breda, is intended to introduce and explain the complex iconographic theme of the Throne of Grace through a brief educational pathway which illustrates some representations of the Trinitarian Mystery from late antiquity up to the fourteenth century.

Useful info

Exhibition: Representing the Mystery of the Trinity. The restoration of the Interlandi “Throne of Grace” by Vrancke van der Stockt, of the diocesan museum of CaltagironeLocation: Room XVII, Pinacoteca, Vatican MuseumsDuration: 22 March – 8 June 2019Ticket: free and included in the Museums entry ticketOpening hours: those of the Museums (entry from 09.00 a.m. – 04.00 p.m., closing at 06.00 p.m.)

N.B.:Free entry to the Vatican Museums and the exhibition every last Sunday of the month.Opening hours: 09.00 a.m. – 02.00 p.m., last entry at 12.30 p.m.

31 March 2019

From 31 March, the by-now historic extraordinary free-of-charge opening on the last Sunday of the month will enable citizens and tourists from all over the world not only to have free access to the “Pope’s Museums”, but will also offer, – at an advantageous rate with reduced entry – a guided collective tour to those who wish to deepen their knowledge of the art collections in the company of an educational guide authorized by Vatican City State.

Thanks to this initiative – which may be booked online subject to availability of places and language – the special free-entry Sunday will become even more special, to meet the requests of an increasingly attentive, aware and curious visiting public.

Delayed opening

9 April 2019

As is by now customary, in the time of Lent, on Tuesday 9 April the Vatican Museums, joining with all the Church who follows the Lord towards Calvary and the Resurrection, will delay opening time until 11.00 a.m. (for visitors with booking) and until 01.00 p.m. (for those without booking) to enable all employees to take part in the Via Crucis that Cardinal Giuseppe Bertello, president of the Governorate of Vatican City State, will lead in the Vatican Gardens.

December 2018

On Tuesday 18, Wednesday 19 and Friday 21 December the Pontifical Villas of Castel Gandolfo will be exceptionally closed to the public to enable the employees to be able to accept the invitation addressed by the Holy Father to all the workers of the Holy See to participate in the Christmas celebrations.

The Directorate apologizes to visitors for any inconvenience caused, and wishes them a Holy Christmas.

Story of a restoration

As the Christmas festivities approach, an Arnolfian bas-relief of the Nativity, as yet unknown to critics, and the story of its recent restoration, will be at the centre of this year’s last Thursdays in the Museums, scheduled for 13 December in the Conference Hall of the Vatican Museums.Introduced by Guido Cornini, the meeting will retrace some of the events in the history of the rare Gothic age marble fragment, from its rediscovery in the early 1900s, in an orchard near San Giorgio in Velabo, up to its situation in the cloister of the convent of the Santi Apostolic in Rome, where it continues to be conserved by the Franciscan Friars Minor Conventual.

The speakers will discuss the identity of the Roman sculptor – most likely a follower of Arnolfo di Cambio – who depicted the Nativity, the Annunciation to the shepherds and the washing of the child Jesus, vertically on a single rectangular panel. Attention will be focused on the important restoration work carried out by the CBC cooperative, with the scientific consultation of the Vatican Museums and the generous support of the US charity Ligamina.
There will be several speakers at the presentation: Rev. Br. Agnello Stoia, OFM, Marina Righetti, Anna Maria D’Achille, Barbara Forti, Guy Devreux, Giovanna Martellotti and Graziano Curri.

A masterpiece from the Museo Egizio in Turin recounted by the Vatican Museums

4 December 2018 – 30 June 2019
Room I, Gregorian Egyptian Museum

A new exhibition project is underway with the inaugural event of 3 December:“Collections in dialogue”, organized by the Vatican Museums in tandem with the most important national and international museum institutions, with the intention of creating valuable reciprocal opportunities for dialogue, exchange, research and scientific growth. It could be none other than the Museo Egizio in Turin – which has already been in “dialogue” with the Pope’s Museums for more than four years – in the role of first authoritative partner in this new initiative, focusing on the exceptional loan of one of the key masterpieces of the Piedmontese museum: the statue of Amenhotep II.

For six months, until 30 June next year, the renowned pink granite sculpture – which has never before left the magnificent Gallery of the Kings – will welcome visitors at the entry of the Gregorian Egyptian Museum in the Vatican Museums. The handsome sovereign, portrayed kneeling in the ritual act of offering two globular vases to the deity, will be the centre of a site-specific museum arrangement, presenting to the public the founding principle of Egyptian culture: the compensation for the transience of man through legitimized royalty.

“Collections in dialogue” thus celebrates the museum space itself as the ideal place for dialogue. With this presupposition, the Vatican Museums andthe Museo Egizio intend to respond to the mission that every cultural institution, by its very nature, is called to perform: to tell its own story and to recount the past it represents.

21 December 2018

On Friday 21 December the doors of the Vatican Museums will be opened at 1.30 p.m., to enable all staff to accept the Holy Father’s invitation to all employees of the Holy See to attend a special audience dedicated to them.

The Directorate would like to apologise to visitors for any resulting inconvenience, and wishes a Holy Christmas to all.

20 November 2018 – 16 February 2019
Braccio di Carlo Magno

An exhibition event that, after two years, once again brings two museum institutions together: the Tretyakov National Gallery in Moscow and the Vatican Museums.
Open to the public from Tuesday 20 November, and arranged in Bernini’s Braccio di Carlo Magno in Saint Peter’s Square, “Pilgrimage of Russian Art. From Dionysius to Malevich” closes the cycle that was opened by the exhibition “Roma Aeterna”, which from 2016 to 2017 hosted in the Russian gallery 42 works from the permanent collection of the Vatican Pinacoteca. If at the time it was an exceptional loan without precedent, today, in line with and continuing that successfully launched dialogue, the Muscovite gallery is responding with equal generosity by sending to the Vatican 54 works from the renowned Gallery and other Russian museums, many of which have never before left their usual locations.

The exhibition project is curated by Arkadi Ippolitov, Tatiana Udenkova and Tatiana Samoilova, with the ambitious aim of presenting the cultural and spiritual message of Russian art in the heart of the western Christian world because, as confirmed also by the director of the Vatican Museums, Barbara Jatta, “Beauty creates bridges, brings different cultures together and makes us all brothers. The successful artistic collaboration between the Vatican and Russia continues today with another exchange – a bridge, in fact – that will enable many visitors to the Vatican to appreciate great Russian painting spanning over six centuries”.
The promoters of the exhibition, aside from the Vatican Museums and the Tretyakov Gallery, are the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, with the generous support of Alisher Usmanov’s Art, Science and Sport foundation.

Thursdays in the Museumsthis 6 December is an unmissable appointment for scholars and for all the public interested in the Etruscans and their world. The focus of the meeting is indeed the presentation of “Etruscology”, the volume in English edited by Alessandro Naso for the De Gruyter publishing house and dedicated to current knowledge of Etruscan civilization: culture, history, religion, society, language and economics, without neglecting topography and relations in the Italic peninsula and in the Mediterranean. The work has the dual aim of presenting an up-to-date overview of this ancient people and of constituting an international point of reference for etruscological studies.

The speakers at the meeting will be Professor Giovanni Colonna, former ordinary professor of Etruscology at the “La Sapienza” University of Rome and member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, and Professor Christopher J. Smith, professor of ancient history at the Scottish University of Saint Andrews and former director of the British School at Rome in the years 2009-2017.
The interventions will be introduced by the Director of the Vatican Museums, Barbara Jatta, and by Maurizio Sannibale, curator of the Department of Etrusco-Italic Antiquities. The meeting will also be attended by Alessandro Naso, editor of the volume, and Serena Pirrotta, editorial director for Studies in Classics and Philosophy of the De Gruyter publishing house.